'I have just been reading the record of a dangerous voyage, [italics] Malte Laurids Brigg [end italics]. Yet Rilke returned safely. I have seen a photo of him in a black coat and a watch chain standing in the gateway of a German castle. Where have I been from which there was any danger of not returning? Even from insanity I came back to find a name, a latchkey, a home, identifying friends. In writing I hug the shore all the time. Rilke's book hs affected me profoundly; given me the sense of being out of my depth, of a dazzling interconnection between two worlds in which one simultaneously moves. It has left me sensitised like a watch that has been too near a magnet. The effect was so violent that I had to lie down at intervals while I was reading it; I was shaking as if in a high fever.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'It is strange that in poetry, when I was eleven, I had what I can only call my first revelation from which I emerged dazed, unable to fit the two worlds together. It has happened again now with the Rilke book'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'When I read Rilke I seem to understand her ['Roberta's] death... she really had carried it about with her, nourished it, achieved it' [alluding to story about Rilke's death on p.70]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
